Container yards will refer to shipping terminals and/or container terminals that may be transfer points for containers between marine and/or land-based shipping of the containers. The containers come in five sizes ranging from twenty feet (20 FT) to fifty three feet (53 FT) long, and when filled, may weigh up to 110,000 pounds, or 50,000 kilograms, making them impossible to move, except by machinery referred to herein as container handlers.
Maintaining the container handlers and their status reporting devices can be a significant expense. As container yards are often required to run inventory systems for the entire terminal autonomously, being able to maintain equipment efficiently without disrupting production becomes increasingly important, creating a need to automatically monitor the inventory moved by these vehicles.
The need to automatically monitor the container handlers mechanical systems, and the state of the status reporting devices communicating what the container handler is doing is further fueled by the observation that overall container yard efficiency tends to improve with knowing the status and/or location of each container handler and of each container moved by that container handler.
Additionally, illicit use of the container handlers may be minimized by use of operator identification as part of the automatic monitoring.